Page:Roman Manchester (1900) by Charles Roeder.djvu/123

 homogeneous paste; others have it mixed with yellowish particles and fine sand. The colour is either greyish red (the worst class) or deep red, light red, and yellowish red and salmon. Some are very strong and well baked, while others are more soft and fragile. The thickness of the sides varies from $1/undefined$, ⅛, ¼, to ⅜ inch. The glaze is either shining bright red or dull red, and runs in many delicate shades. The majority belongs, according to Professor Haverfield, to the second, and perhaps the third, century. Potters' marks abound, but unfortunately are often either too fragmentary or illegible, in consequence of the subsequent detachment of the fine glaze which covers it to identify them. A comparison of the potter's name from the various stations of Lancashire alone, when lists are more complete and the names properly authenticated, is of great interest, and will give us, when it is done, much information of the chronology and routes the traders followed and the stations they visited in their consecutive turns. Strange to say, we have little here of stamps found frequently in Chester and even Wilderspool. Of those of Melandra we have to await the report.

—Their paste is of ash grey, or greyblack colour, very coarse and brittle, and easily crumbles; it contains much large-grained sand, the inside very often rough. It has either a black glaze or a friction glaze; the thickness varies from ⅛, $3/16$, ¼, ⅜, to $7/16$ inch. We have such a great variety that it is almost impossible to classify them. It is soft burnt, and some of the larger parts, often 6 inches in diameter, bear a thick crust of black soot, from the action of fire. Their rim indicates that they could be slung over the fire. We have a great number of platters, dishes, the latter ornamented with diagonal